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Sales rates
Author
Looking over the top Solitaire game downloads at cnet''s downloads.com, it''s evident that one brand is dominating the market with a huge solitaire collection. The leader is a collection called SolSuite 2002, and if you look at the weekly download stats for it''s two demos - one is ''freeware'' (actually severely crippled-ware) and the other a standard shareware model - you''ll see that they are consistently making around 20000 downloads a week, while the rest of the solitaire games are picking up the pitiful scraps. Now let''s pretend that they are getting say, a .5% turnover rate...at around 20000 a week, thats about 100 copies sold a week, give or take. Let''s, for ease of calculation, pretend that they netted $20 for each copy (I think they charge $20 actually, so it''ll be less than that in reality). Now, if my math is correct, thats around 2000 dollars a week, off of a simple solitaire collection. What I''m wondering is...does this seem right to you? It seems like a lot of money to be making off of one shareware card game in one week. Yes, I know their collection is good, and it''s been around a while...But still...2000 bucks a week for a card game that two or three people could easily create? Can anyone confirm or deny these sorts of numbers? Thanks...
*confirms*
It works exactly like this. If you get the dwonloads, you get the money. There isn''t actually much (any) change in the conversion rate, so download * conversion rate * price = income.
It works exactly like this. If you get the dwonloads, you get the money. There isn''t actually much (any) change in the conversion rate, so download * conversion rate * price = income.
Author
Yeah, I know the process and everything....It just seemed like it was a lot of money for a Solitaire collection, I mean 20000 downloads a week? Thats nuts. And the numbers I was fooling around with were for a .5% turnover only. What if it was higher than that? Jeez...That seems like a lot of possible cash for a market where one or two guys can build a decent competitor in a few months. Why haven''t more people tapped into this? I know that puzzle games and the like are real popular, but I mean, a Solitaire game is quite simple in itself to program, requires minimal art, and is a low-risk program (No 3D, no hardware worries, etc.). It just seems a bit odd to me that no one has put out a real spiffy competitor to take some turf in the market - If there is that much money to be made for something so trivial and simple, then why aren''t people flocking to make millions of Solitaire games? SolSuite is sitting, unchallenged, on this mountain of gold, and nobody else is putting out any real efforts to take a real share for themselves, or even sit on the top. Granted SolSuite is good, and has lots of good features and an incredible amount of games, but once again, I find it odd that the market is so ''quiet''.
When it comes to market share, it is typical to see one software vendor take 90% of the market, and the 2nd best take 90% of what is left.
Example, although not quite the same now, Microsoft vs Mac OS.
So if someone could come out with a better solitaire suite of games, they would still have to contend with market share and visibility.
But I think I see what you are getting at. What the heck is a Solitaire game getting so much money for when it should have millions of competitors and other games aren''t nearly getting that kind of exposure?
I think maybe it is that the competition isn''t that great. I don''t know too many people who like to play Solitaire, and maybe that is the same when it comes to people who program those games. Who wants to make Solitaire when it has been already done and there are other more exciting things to do?
Example, although not quite the same now, Microsoft vs Mac OS.
So if someone could come out with a better solitaire suite of games, they would still have to contend with market share and visibility.
But I think I see what you are getting at. What the heck is a Solitaire game getting so much money for when it should have millions of competitors and other games aren''t nearly getting that kind of exposure?
I think maybe it is that the competition isn''t that great. I don''t know too many people who like to play Solitaire, and maybe that is the same when it comes to people who program those games. Who wants to make Solitaire when it has been already done and there are other more exciting things to do?
Your analysis has several flaws.
1) You are looking only at download.com. Download.com is only one download site. It is an important one to be sure, but there are many other download sites. More importantly, every product has its own web site. Most products get most of their downloads from their own web sites, not from external sites such as download.com.
This mistake led you to believe that SolSuite is the market leader in solitaire games, which is completely wrong. SolSuite is the distant 2nd place product to the real first place product, Pretty Good Solitaire.
You are getting an accurate read of the number of downloads of SolSuite, however, because TreeCardGames (the makers of SolSuite) send ALL of their downloads from their own site to download.com in order to increase their download counts. So you are getting a reasonably good feel for their total number of downloads (although you are missing the downloads from other download sites).
Most other products do not send their downloads to download.com. Our product Pretty Good Solitaire gets far, far more than 20,000 downloads per week from our own web site. We find it more profitable to put up our own download page during the download than to send the user to CNet.
If you expand your research beyond download.com and look at Yahoo and Google, you will find the market anything but quiet. While you''re at it, go out to Wal-Mart or Best Buy and look at the shelves. Most of the top shareware solitaire collections are also sold at retail (Pretty Good Solitaire is called Solitaire Master at retail).
2) You are assuming that it is easy to make a solitaire game. It is easy to make a solitaire game, but it is difficult to make a good one. Every month there is another person that does it wrong, every month another new solitaire collection comes out and fails miserably. In the 7 years that I have been doing solitaire games, I have seen over 100 new solitaire programs come out and fail.
Very few of the programmers who try to make them have any knowledge of the game, nor do they do any research whatsoever into the history of the game. All they do is copy the games from other programs (and when they copy our original games, they get a letter from our lawyer). They are blissfully unaware that there are centuries of history of the game and that there are thousands of people who will expect every detail of the games to be right.
If you think that solitaire is trivial or simple, you are doomed to fail. If you have nothing but contempt for the subject matter (contempt for solitaire just screams out from your messages), you will fail. If you make yet another me-too copycat solitaire program, you will fail. Everybody else has.
The few others that have succeeded with their games have done so by doing something unique, not by copying. If you really want to succeed, you will need to become an expert in the field and make it your life. I''ve been doing it now for 7 years.
3) Conversion rates vary greatly. Most games get about 0.1% conversion. I do 3% and higher, but that''s only because of the accumulation of years of experience in shareware. Your conversion rate will depend on how good your game is and how good you are at marketing.
Thomas Warfield
http://www.goodsol.com
1) You are looking only at download.com. Download.com is only one download site. It is an important one to be sure, but there are many other download sites. More importantly, every product has its own web site. Most products get most of their downloads from their own web sites, not from external sites such as download.com.
This mistake led you to believe that SolSuite is the market leader in solitaire games, which is completely wrong. SolSuite is the distant 2nd place product to the real first place product, Pretty Good Solitaire.
You are getting an accurate read of the number of downloads of SolSuite, however, because TreeCardGames (the makers of SolSuite) send ALL of their downloads from their own site to download.com in order to increase their download counts. So you are getting a reasonably good feel for their total number of downloads (although you are missing the downloads from other download sites).
Most other products do not send their downloads to download.com. Our product Pretty Good Solitaire gets far, far more than 20,000 downloads per week from our own web site. We find it more profitable to put up our own download page during the download than to send the user to CNet.
If you expand your research beyond download.com and look at Yahoo and Google, you will find the market anything but quiet. While you''re at it, go out to Wal-Mart or Best Buy and look at the shelves. Most of the top shareware solitaire collections are also sold at retail (Pretty Good Solitaire is called Solitaire Master at retail).
2) You are assuming that it is easy to make a solitaire game. It is easy to make a solitaire game, but it is difficult to make a good one. Every month there is another person that does it wrong, every month another new solitaire collection comes out and fails miserably. In the 7 years that I have been doing solitaire games, I have seen over 100 new solitaire programs come out and fail.
Very few of the programmers who try to make them have any knowledge of the game, nor do they do any research whatsoever into the history of the game. All they do is copy the games from other programs (and when they copy our original games, they get a letter from our lawyer). They are blissfully unaware that there are centuries of history of the game and that there are thousands of people who will expect every detail of the games to be right.
If you think that solitaire is trivial or simple, you are doomed to fail. If you have nothing but contempt for the subject matter (contempt for solitaire just screams out from your messages), you will fail. If you make yet another me-too copycat solitaire program, you will fail. Everybody else has.
The few others that have succeeded with their games have done so by doing something unique, not by copying. If you really want to succeed, you will need to become an expert in the field and make it your life. I''ve been doing it now for 7 years.
3) Conversion rates vary greatly. Most games get about 0.1% conversion. I do 3% and higher, but that''s only because of the accumulation of years of experience in shareware. Your conversion rate will depend on how good your game is and how good you are at marketing.
Thomas Warfield
http://www.goodsol.com
I was wondering if "goodsol" would spot this thread. 
His complaint about people "doing it wrong" for solitaire games applies to the category I sell in, as well: journaling software ( The Journal ). Seems everyones first shareware product idea is a diary...
However, The Journal doesn''t sell anywhere *near* the level of Pretty Good Solitaire. And, unfortunately, I''m not sure where I stand in relation to other journaling/diary products. A rather nasty hole in my information. I''ve always been tempted to "just ask" the other major journal software developers just to see if they would respond and be willing to swap figures. Just so we can get an idea for the overall size of the market.
I *do* know that I have about a 5% conversion rate, though, based on downloads from my own web page (which, since ZDNet stopped hosting files is about the only download site I have now). Since there are probably some downloads from elsewhere that I don''t don''t know about, I''m willing to estimate The Journal''s conversion rate at 3%-5%.
DavidRM
Samu Games
His complaint about people "doing it wrong" for solitaire games applies to the category I sell in, as well: journaling software ( The Journal ). Seems everyones first shareware product idea is a diary...
However, The Journal doesn''t sell anywhere *near* the level of Pretty Good Solitaire. And, unfortunately, I''m not sure where I stand in relation to other journaling/diary products. A rather nasty hole in my information. I''ve always been tempted to "just ask" the other major journal software developers just to see if they would respond and be willing to swap figures. Just so we can get an idea for the overall size of the market.
I *do* know that I have about a 5% conversion rate, though, based on downloads from my own web page (which, since ZDNet stopped hosting files is about the only download site I have now). Since there are probably some downloads from elsewhere that I don''t don''t know about, I''m willing to estimate The Journal''s conversion rate at 3%-5%.
DavidRM
Samu Games
Author
Sorry, goodsol, if I have offended you in some way.
1) I''m sorry I left your product out but I did not see any numbers for it, so I didn''t include it in my post. Thanks for clearing that up. What I meant by a quiet market is that though there appears to be massive sales potential, there is relatively few ''big dogs'' like PGS and SolSuite. It''s mostly just smaller, less feature-packed products that aren''t too hard to compete with themselves. I was simply making a point that the market is an excellent place for a wannabe or budding shareware author (like me) to get into - low-risk with potentially high gains.
2) I have to disagree with you - I think that making a Solitaire game, even a ''good'' one is very easy. I''m not sure what other types of game programming you have done before, but compared to programming 3D engines or real-time games...it''s a slice of cake. You don''t have to worry about graphical performance nearly as much, (Hell GDI works *great* for all my needs), or collision detection, or visibility systems, or many different file formats, or supporting a broad range of hardware, you get the point. I started my solitaire collection about 3-4 months ago right after working on a 3D engine and 3D arcade shooter and let me tell you - it felt like a well deserved break after stepping down. Now, a few months later, in between finishing high school, working and sharing a computer with other people, I feel that I have a product with potential to compete with the likes of the top-dogs in the market. That''s what I mean by easy. A few months of crunch-time and I have a list of features that I feel is pretty sufficient for the amount of time I had to put in it. And no, it''s not a copycat program. I believe that it''s features and advanced game-editor will seperate it from the rest. Here is a basic list of the biggies for anyone interested.
* Advanced stat-tracking - Undos, Redos, Time, Points, Wins, Losses, Total game time, Win / Loss ratios, etc.
* Stat graphs - Attracive ''3D'' line graphs or bars.
* Customizable everything - sounds, card-backs, card-fronts, background, and ''drop-targets''.
* The ability to download new games at anytime. (That is why I can justify shipping with a smaller amount than say, 300)
* The ability to create your own games *from scratch* with the built in C/Basic-like interpreted language and advanced WYSIWYG editor.
* The ability to distribute your custom games with friends and upload them to the game website for review and publishing with future versions.
* Unlimited Undo / Redo.
* Save / Load game as well as QuickSave / QuickLoad.
* AutoBackup for custom games.
* Multiple user profiles for seperate score/stat tracking, settings.
* Multi or Single user modes.
I believe, that by tailoring to casual and advanced users, I have created a product that will do well in the market, and possibly give SolSuite, and, well, you, something to think about. It was easy, but I leave it up to you to decide if it''s good or not when it comes out
.
If you''re really getting far more than 20000 downloads a week at 3%, then I am really happy for you. Please tell me, what kind of car do you drive? (No really, tell me...)
Also, goodsol, I was wondering...I debated a looonggg time with myself about how I should implement the game-rule system to support a wide variety of games. A scripting system finally won out (And I''m glad it did). I''ve heard of products using similar DLLs with event handling functions for each game, and I''ve also heard of simple rule-and-action flags. Can you tell me what PGS uses?
1) I''m sorry I left your product out but I did not see any numbers for it, so I didn''t include it in my post. Thanks for clearing that up. What I meant by a quiet market is that though there appears to be massive sales potential, there is relatively few ''big dogs'' like PGS and SolSuite. It''s mostly just smaller, less feature-packed products that aren''t too hard to compete with themselves. I was simply making a point that the market is an excellent place for a wannabe or budding shareware author (like me) to get into - low-risk with potentially high gains.
2) I have to disagree with you - I think that making a Solitaire game, even a ''good'' one is very easy. I''m not sure what other types of game programming you have done before, but compared to programming 3D engines or real-time games...it''s a slice of cake. You don''t have to worry about graphical performance nearly as much, (Hell GDI works *great* for all my needs), or collision detection, or visibility systems, or many different file formats, or supporting a broad range of hardware, you get the point. I started my solitaire collection about 3-4 months ago right after working on a 3D engine and 3D arcade shooter and let me tell you - it felt like a well deserved break after stepping down. Now, a few months later, in between finishing high school, working and sharing a computer with other people, I feel that I have a product with potential to compete with the likes of the top-dogs in the market. That''s what I mean by easy. A few months of crunch-time and I have a list of features that I feel is pretty sufficient for the amount of time I had to put in it. And no, it''s not a copycat program. I believe that it''s features and advanced game-editor will seperate it from the rest. Here is a basic list of the biggies for anyone interested.
* Advanced stat-tracking - Undos, Redos, Time, Points, Wins, Losses, Total game time, Win / Loss ratios, etc.
* Stat graphs - Attracive ''3D'' line graphs or bars.
* Customizable everything - sounds, card-backs, card-fronts, background, and ''drop-targets''.
* The ability to download new games at anytime. (That is why I can justify shipping with a smaller amount than say, 300)
* The ability to create your own games *from scratch* with the built in C/Basic-like interpreted language and advanced WYSIWYG editor.
* The ability to distribute your custom games with friends and upload them to the game website for review and publishing with future versions.
* Unlimited Undo / Redo.
* Save / Load game as well as QuickSave / QuickLoad.
* AutoBackup for custom games.
* Multiple user profiles for seperate score/stat tracking, settings.
* Multi or Single user modes.
I believe, that by tailoring to casual and advanced users, I have created a product that will do well in the market, and possibly give SolSuite, and, well, you, something to think about. It was easy, but I leave it up to you to decide if it''s good or not when it comes out
. If you''re really getting far more than 20000 downloads a week at 3%, then I am really happy for you. Please tell me, what kind of car do you drive?
(No really, tell me...)Also, goodsol, I was wondering...I debated a looonggg time with myself about how I should implement the game-rule system to support a wide variety of games. A scripting system finally won out (And I''m glad it did). I''ve heard of products using similar DLLs with event handling functions for each game, and I''ve also heard of simple rule-and-action flags. Can you tell me what PGS uses?
You said you get most of your downloads not from sites like download.com but from your own web site. But how do people find your website? Demos on shareware cds or advertisement etc ?
lakibuk:
Most shareware sites these days don''t host the files they list. They link to them. So if someone downloads the install package from one of those sites, the download is actually coming from your own web page.
If you''re curious, though...I get most of my referrals from Google. People who do searches on "journaling software". Last I checked I was number 3 or 4 on the list.
DavidRM
Samu Games
Most shareware sites these days don''t host the files they list. They link to them. So if someone downloads the install package from one of those sites, the download is actually coming from your own web page.
If you''re curious, though...I get most of my referrals from Google. People who do searches on "journaling software". Last I checked I was number 3 or 4 on the list.
DavidRM
Samu Games
OBP,
>Here is a basic list of the biggies for anyone interested.
There''s nothing in this list that hasn''t been done many times by many different programs. It is very difficult to achieve uniqueness by features, they are easily copied. Most of the games that achieve uniqueness do it by having unique games (for example, one of my best competitors, the BVS Solitaire Collection, does it this way).
You may think it is easy now, but the work only begins when you release the first version.
>Please tell me, what kind of car do you drive?
I suggest you read the book "The Millionaire Next Door", it has a lot about this question.
lakibuk,
You get visitors to a shareware website the same way any website gets visitors. Links from other web sites, search engines, advertising, word of mouth, etc.
Thomas Warfield
http://www.goodsol.com
>Here is a basic list of the biggies for anyone interested.
There''s nothing in this list that hasn''t been done many times by many different programs. It is very difficult to achieve uniqueness by features, they are easily copied. Most of the games that achieve uniqueness do it by having unique games (for example, one of my best competitors, the BVS Solitaire Collection, does it this way).
You may think it is easy now, but the work only begins when you release the first version.
>Please tell me, what kind of car do you drive?
I suggest you read the book "The Millionaire Next Door", it has a lot about this question.
lakibuk,
You get visitors to a shareware website the same way any website gets visitors. Links from other web sites, search engines, advertising, word of mouth, etc.
Thomas Warfield
http://www.goodsol.com
This topic is closed to new replies.
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